(Drivebycuriosity)
- Alternate history is fun. An author can run his fantasy without limits and change the past as much as he wants. Robert Charles Wilson`s novel Darwinia - A Novel Of A Very Different Twentieth Century displays a very spooky past (amazon
).
In the year 1912 a weird event suddenly changed the world. The European continent, including England, disappeared. Cities & people vanished and the European civilization got replaced by an apparently untouched wilderness with strange unknown plants & animals. Soon Americans, Australians and others are resettling the European coasts, rebuilt the cities and begin to explore the strange hinterland.
The plot splits into 3 lines and follows different protagonists in America and Europe. "Darwinia" begins like a classic adventure story, set in an exotic, almost fairy tale, environment, but becomes more and more violent and turns then into a horror thriller with paranormal elements. The plot expands into cosmology, quantum physics, Buddhist mythology and theology.
I enjoyed the mysterious start of the novel but I found the growing violence and the expansion into mythology and crude philosophy rather challenging. Robert Charles Wilson wrote better books, including "Blind Lake" ( amazon) & "Spin" ( amazon).
